Steve Fossett is not exactly a household name in the sport of ballooning. He has more than 200 hours of flight time logged, almost all of it in just two flights, one across the Atlantic Ocean and the other across the Pacific. Prior to those flights he had logged about 20 hours in hot air balloons and just 3 hours in gas. Prior to flying a Cameron Rozier balloon across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans he had never landed a gas balloon solo. So just who is this new world record holder Steve Fossett?
"Ballooning is not my only sport," is how Fossett answers that question. "I’m very involved in adventure sports," he says in an understatement of colossal magnitude. Steve Fossett is a man who once swam the English Channel, has driven his own dog team in the Iditarod sled race, and has single-handedly sailed (raced) across the Atlantic Ocean. For relaxation he ventures out to climb a mountain or two; the highest peak on six of the seven continents.
"The one thing that should be noted about Steve Fossett," says his friend Bruce Comstock, "is that he has not bought success. Sure, when climbing those peaks he was with teams of expert climbers, but he did the climbing. He did the swimming in the English Channel, and he drove that dog sled across Alaska-he never paid someone else to do those things for him."
Fossett is a man driven to accomplish "firsts," to "boldly go where no one has gone before" to borrow a phrase from a popular television show. A fixed wing pilot, his interests in aviation turned toward long distance flights and ballooning. Why ballooning? It’s the most fertile area for firsts, and the technology of the sport, the major advances taking place convinced me there will be many exciting flights made in ballooning in the next few years."
With a mere 20 hours in his log book, Fossett recruited balloonist friend Tim Cole, one of the pioneers in the use of anhydrous ammonia as a lifting gas, to serve as his co-pilot on a flight across the Atlantic. Was this a training flight for the Pacific?
"Not necessarily," he says, "flying the Atlantic and the Pacific are two different ideas, but I think one is the next step beyond the other." Following his own logic, what then would follow a flight across the Pacific... a flight around the world?
"I think I do have some things going for me when considering a flight around the world," says Fossett, "however among the things I have not solved are how to build a pressurized capsule, so I am going to consider these things over the next few months as to whether or not I should be a contender for the around the world flight." And would such a flight be made solo, like his Pacific crossing, or with a teammate, as on the Atlantic flight?
"It depends on what equipment I would fly. If I wanted to fly a system of the same scale as the equipment I flew this time (over the Pacific), I would want to do it solo," he explains, "because of the weight advantage on supplies and crew. But if I were building up a bigger system with pressurized capsule then it might make sense to go with two people; I believe it could be done either way.
"Actually I was impressed on this flight with just how much farther I think we have to go before being able to make an around the world flight. I was especially impressed with how sensitive the equipment becomes to altitude and cold and I suspect we have all underestimated the difficulty of keeping equipment operating in the cold and altitude. I had previously thought that someone would succeed (around the world) within one or two years; now I think a better estimate of the time frame might be two to five years," says Fossett.
So if it should take him a few months to decide whether to enter the race would he be concerned about being beaten to the punch? "No because I’m skeptical whether anyone will make it on the first try, so this whole question of flying around the world may be left undone for at least another season."
Meanwhile, what’s next for this daring adventurer? Most of us would probably look forward to some R&R, rest and relaxation. Not so Steve Fossett. He’s off to take a closer look at some of the ocean he has just crossed. Fossett is off to sail his tri-maran sail boat in a trans-pacific race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. Of course, he does this hoping to set some world speed records for sailboats-more firsts for a man to whom the number two has little or no meaning.
Notes of interest:
Sept. 93 - received his hot air balloon pilot’s license
Jan. 94 - received his gas balloon rating
Sept. 85 - swam English Channel (France to England)
June 93 - drove in the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race
March 92 - led dog team in Iditarod 1,165 mile race across Alaska
Nov. 94 - 5th place, Route du Rhum, solo transatlantic sailboat race
Aug. 94 - transatlantic balloon flight, St. John’s Canada to Hamburg, Germany.
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